The 85-year-old pope is resigning "because of advanced age," Benedict told the cardinals of the Catholic Church on Monday.

"Strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me," the pope told the cardinals, according to the Vatican.

The last pope to resign was Gregory XII in 1415. He did so to end a civil war within the church in which more than one man claimed to be pope.

Benedict, the 265th pope, is the sixth German to serve as pope and the first since the 11th century. He became pope in 2005.

He has led church after the third-longest papacy in church history and during a time in which the church is declining in his native Europe but expanding in Africa and Latin America.

Benedict's time as pope has been marked with a series of scandals and controversies, including hundreds of new allegations of sexual abuse by priests.

Because you compared voluntary donations to a tax-exempt religious group that I have zero control or influence over to a non-voluntary taxing to a democratically elected government for which I am given the ability to vote for both elected officials and policy at the city, county, state, and federal levels.

High Tech is Sorcery and the people who are really powerful are literally telling people to commit crimes using the psychic interspace created by the WWW and Wireless. They are controlling peoples actions like drones . The two things are deeply intertwined. The more man's brain interfaces with machines the creepier it gets. They use brains separate from a human body in a supercomputer and you have The Image of the Beast. The military has been doing this since the 50s

Because you compared voluntary donations to a tax-exempt religious group that I have zero control or influence over to a non-voluntary taxing to a democratically elected government for which I am given the ability to vote for both elected officials and policy at the city, county, state, and federal levels.

Your analogy is shit.

Because if you were truly principled, you'd do just that. Anyone can claim to be principled when it doesn't cost him anything. Instead, you posted some bullshit about being Catholic while berating the church for a significant plank of the church itself, which is the opposition to homosexuality and gay marriage. You're either not at all Catholic and trying to stir shit up, or you're a Catholic in name only, and haven't bothered to follow the actual teachings of the church.

Because if you were truly principled, you'd do just that. Anyone can claim to be principled when it doesn't cost him anything. Instead, you posted some bullshit about being Catholic while berating the church for a significant plank of the church itself, which is the opposition to homosexuality and gay marriage. You're either not at all Catholic and trying to stir shit up, or you're a Catholic in name only, and haven't bothered to follow the actual teachings of the church.

So being a catholic is analogous to being a republican?

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris616

High Tech is Sorcery and the people who are really powerful are literally telling people to commit crimes using the psychic interspace created by the WWW and Wireless. They are controlling peoples actions like drones . The two things are deeply intertwined. The more man's brain interfaces with machines the creepier it gets. They use brains separate from a human body in a supercomputer and you have The Image of the Beast. The military has been doing this since the 50s

I can't bring myself to really celebrate as a Catholic anymore, and I certainly have stopped all monetary donations to the Church.

I just can't accept that my money would go towards the comfortable lifestyle of a child molester, or that it might be used to fund hateful anti-gay-marriage propaganda.

That's not what I believe, and I just can't support it.

I look forward to the day when the Catholic church has purged itself of their corruption, but I think that day is a long way off.

The sad thing is that, no matter the religious institution, it is populated with human beings and is thus utterly corruptible at every level. I think the first step towards a "clean" church is transparency. Complete and total transparency.

Understandable, but the heyday of active sexual abuse was decades ago, and I don't know of any hateful anti-gay marriage propaganda spread by the Church.

I wonder what the % of preists didnt participate in the coverup of molestation of kids?

Dunno. Ratzinger had a shitty record on child molestation, though.

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Key pillars of the Wojtila-Ratzinger counter-reformation – like the Legion of Christ, the creation of the repeat child rapist and drug trafficker, Marcial Maciel – crumbled to dust. Key enablers of abuse were given rewards – Boston’s Cardinal Law springs to mind; other minor figures – including the monster who raped over 200 deaf children, Father Lawrence Murphy – were allowed a quiet retirement with no serious punishment;

I wonder what the % of preists didnt participate in the coverup of molestation of kids?

I'd say pretty large. I think the molestation thing was a significant percentage, but that'd be, what? 10%? 5%? 3%? Then you have the bishops and cardinals handling it (who take a huge percentage of the blame), but I doubt it was a matter of widespread "participation" in the coverup for the thousands upon thousands of local priests. Even if they heard the off rumor once in a while, that's not participating in a cover up...

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